Wittgenstein explores the notions of anti-metaphysics. The whole notion of meta cognition is identification of purpose through self discovery and self expansion in the name of purpose. We are given names, we choose to give purpose to them. Names have no underlying, certain, god-given, natural, or predetermined path for its patron. We are cogs in a machine, thinking we are the machine. We are frogs in a well; the sky is a circle. We are inmates in a cave; the world is a shadow.

Daunting. Horrifying. Meaningless.

So for my Phil’s Day Off I decided to go out to Yoga with my friend, that I refer to as Mick Jagger in my blog posts. While Mick had never gone, I had been quite a few times. Yoga’s an activity I like to treat myself to now and then. My mother always says “treat yourself like a princess.” Personally, I’ve never seen myself as a princess. In our society if I were to play a role, I’d like to be shoelaces. All the shoelaces, that have ever existed, will exist, and currently exist. I play a crucial yet misunderstood role in our society. Yes, technically society can continue without the shoelace, but so can society without a princess. However, society has built a role, a shoe culture around the shoelace. Like booze or cigarettes, theoretically unnecessary for human development and progression, I provide a somehow background meaning to our society. I hold the boots of soldiers fighting for freedom. I grip the dreams of athletes. I am the shoelace.

So Yoga. It was fine. I don’t have any pictures. You’re not really allowed or able to. A supposedly meaningful practice, in which one binds one’s natural bond of mind, body, and soul. Individuality. For me it’s just an opportunity to take an hour and stretch and really do nothing at all. Aryabhata, an Indian mathematician, in the year 498 AD began implementing the idea of 0, nothing. This idea of nothing, absolute absoluteness has shaped much of the Indian culture. The concept of nothing is powerful in itself and can lead to absolute enlightenment in which one can escape from their personal, petty strife and live in total objectivity, knowledge, spirituality, and… whatnot. So, reason for doing Yoga, doing nothing, is not cheapening the process. Which is my own personal delusion.

Anyways, afterwards, I went where the wind blew me. Mick Jagger detests impulsiveness… to say the very least. With my disgruntled and weary rocker, I did the following.

Ate sushi

Ate gelato

Took the bus home

Followed Mick Jagger home so I could watch him do math

Watched Mick Jagger do math

Reluctantly played a racing Mortal Kombat game

And lost

Reluctantly played Mortal Kombat

And won victoriously where the heavens parted and crowned me king

Then I went home.

When I got home I watched a couple Woody Allen films, and a BBC documentary on Matisse.

Really what I gained from my day is nothing. My day meant nothing. My life, life means nothing. It’s uncertain, horrifying, daunting… yet freeing. Once you’re able to accept meaningless, uncertainty, and nothingness, you’re able to realize possibility, potential, and progress. We are not who we are, but what we do. People are like colors and chords. We can’t define hues or notes by what they are, their identities, but their capabilities. Red inflicts passion. B flat reminds stability. Mick Jagger invokes liveliness.

Through Wittgenstein’s metaphysical lens, metaphysics is useless. We have no real preset, predetermined purpose. We have potential; as we dwell on identity, potential diminishes. Existing is hard; it’s oh so very hard. If you look at the amount of things that don’t exist in comparison with the amount of things that do exist, things that exist are scarce. Why don’t we focus on something that we can do, and do something.

Sure. Who we are means something, but it doesn’t mean anything at all.

And that’s what I got from Phil’s Day Off, Wittgenstein, and Metaphysics.

Because life has no inherent meaning, life CAN have purpose. This purpose is something we create ourselves. Take the name analogy. My name is Julie. It means youthful in french. I didn’t choose it, unless I did a whole back to the future ordeal which I am not yet aware of. It’s a name I identify with, but it’s not an identity I am. I give new meaning to the name just as Julie Andrews did to her “Julie”. Life. There are many like it, but this one is mine. I give purpose to my life as you do to yours.

And in this context of life, I find the whole metaphysical discussion of life to be too bias towards humans. I mean there is that argument that humans have the whole ability to connect and communicate, but so can most life. Other forms of life can communicate and connect in ways we can’t imagine on the basis we don’t know what we don’t know. We’re confused on what we’re confused about. Chimps have murder and rape and celebration and sex. All life understands creation and destruction, pleasure and discomfort. We just happen to record and remember our understandings of this, and thus able to expand our influence. That’s all due to the right about of hydrogen atoms or nitrogen atoms.

When we go on about the meaning of life, I find people tend to give purposed lives to people. We’re not the only things with life. When we think about life on Mars we’re not expecting Farmer Joe and the wife, growing their red crops. We’re expecting little bacteria scraggling about. Life belongs to not only humans, but bugs and trees and fish and elephants. Life means different things to different things.

Existing and knowing it, means different things to different people. Life isn’t some single path shoving down its carriers down a conveyor belt of milestones: birthdays, graduation, marriage, death like cancer does and its stages: stage I, stage 2, stage 4, death. That to me is looking at life like a disease.

Life to me means existing and knowing it. Life has no inherent meaning, for life is so very different for those who possess it. For those who possess life give it meaning, personalized and individual.

So… does life mean anything? There are over trillions of lives on this planet we call earth, alone. Compared to things that don’t have life: existing and unaware or not existing, we’re a minority. So life means something, I have to say. But it doesn’t mean anything preset or predetermined. Life is uncertain, and meaningless, and therefore full of potential and possibility. Life can have purpose, but WE give life that purpose.

And what does this mean to me? It reassures me like a space captain orbiting the earth. It’s my view from my spaceship looking down at earth and how big it is… then the stars… and then how small the earth is… how small I really am. And how I don’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but I can MAKE myself matter to someone, to me. That’s probably what I’ll spend my life doing, and probably what many others have before: try and matter before I stop existing and know it. Mattering is purpose. Mattering is something you control… unless you’re Prince George. Then again I already noted why I’d rather be a shoe fastener then royalty.

Anyways, that’s life in my lens of metaphysics. But who knows, that might change. In fact, that’ll probably change. Who knows.

Together with the comment, Julie, what you’ve written here captures some of the most energetic and frenetically creative work I’ve read in some time. Your ability to move between the deeply contemplative, hilarious frivolity, and so many bold expressions and reflections of your own thinking is something exciting to share in – thanks for this! Excellent imagery, symbolism… and a lot more.